


Indefinable

by calrissian18



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 08:46:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4053877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They didn’t fit a definition, just each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indefinable

**Author's Note:**

> Last go round we did some season one divergence and here we're playing around at the start of three. This takes place during the first episode of 3A (with one minor canonical change ~~as it was stupid~~ ), because I completely and totally buy the fandom theory that Stiles and Derek fooled around over that missing summer. This is just a snippet of that, I'm sure one day I will have to truly _indulge_ in that lost bit of canon with a loving and extensive fic dedicated to it but, for now, this will tide me over.
> 
> Written for the fullmoon_ficlet prompt: Flux.
> 
> Edited: 8.18.16

Stiles paced in the hallway inside the front door of the Hale house, occasionally throwing angry glares in Derek’s direction.  Who didn’t seem particularly wounded by them or like he, well, noticed them  _at all_  as he went around prying up floorboards and removing dead plants from them.  Weird guy.

Well.  Weird werewolf.

“Dude,” Stiles said sharply, because there was only so long he could be distracted by tight jeans and long sleeves.  Granted, it was a while because he’d been standing around for about ten minutes, but still not an eternity.  Gone was the leather jacket and the scowl, the only armor Derek’d had when he didn’t have any armor.  Now he seemed calmer… more settled.  He was actually wearing a color,  _purple_  of all things, and he looked all vulnerable.  And touchable.  Who had allowed  _that_  to happen?  “You couldn’t follow a single-step plan.  Do you know how many steps are involved in a single-step plan?”  Derek gave him an unimpressed look.  “ _One_.”  Stiles wagged a finger at him.  “One step.  I mean you really couldn’t just  _not tell Scott_?  And not only did you tell Scott but you metaphorically punched me in the face afterwards.”

Derek rolled his eyes, moving the box he was dropping things into from the floor to the table, the one he’d had Isaac bleeding internally up on earlier.  “I didn’t tell Scott,” he parried with a grunt.

Stiles snorted and challenged that utter  _lie_.  “Oh really, okay, so you and Scott just hang out now?  He comes over to your officially condemned property and you guys make s’mores?”  He winced because, really, was there a worse choice he could’ve made there?  “Or some other… non-fire-related thing.” 

Derek squinted judgmentally at him, did that condescending sneer thing that Stiles, and Peter, could still aggravate him into.  “His mother was at the hospital when Isaac was brought in.  She called him first.”

And, okay, that was  _maybe_  an acceptable reason for why Scott would know that didn’t involve Derek being at fault for it.  Stiles wasn’t about to just lay down and die though.  He was angry, angry that Scott had gotten dragged into this after all, when they’d been doing so well keeping it from him, and being angry with Derek was old hat.  He knew how to do that, okay?  “Well shouldn’t you have been able to beat him there, with the whole Alpha-speed thing?” 

“I told you to stop calling it that,” Derek said with faux-exasperation.  He brushed dirt from the knee of his jeans.  “I wasn’t even in the county when I got the call,” he tacked on, adding with a little bit of apex predator-infused pride, “I think I got there pretty quickly, considering.”

Stiles scowled at him, crossing his arms over his chest.  He kept lining up reasons to blame Derek and Derek kept knocking them flat.  Well, he may be down but he was  _not_  out.  “I thought I told you to text me if you had to go outside city limits so I would know if an alarm needed sounding.  In case you disappeared too?  Since, you know, that actually  _is_ a legitimate concern these days.”  He tossed an arm out to where Isaac had been only an hour or so earlier, after  _he’d_  gone missing for days. 

Derek leveled him with a baleful stare.  “I did.”

“Bullshit, you did—” Stiles started victoriously, even as he fumbled his phone out of his pocket.  There was no unread text.  Point in his favor.  He pulled up Derek’s thread in his messages.  The top one read:  _Lead in Shasta.  Back by pm_ and had a time stamp of 5:25 a.m.  Which meant Stiles had probably heard the snippet of ‘Roar’ – his text alert for Derek – and opened it half-awake (or possibly still-asleep) and forgot about it.  “Oh,” he said with a frown.  “Well.  Who texts people that early?  Of course I wasn’t going to remember it.”  It was weak, but better than nothing.

“Foolproof system,” Derek retorted with a derisive snort.  Stiles was rallying, ready to make his next point, when Derek cut him off with a definitive, “I’m not the reason Scott found out.” 

Stiles shut his mouth firmly.  He got what Derek was really saying.  Stop looking for people (read: him) to blame and accept the reality that Scott knew, then move forward from there.  And, well: “Okay.” 

Derek quirked an eyebrow at him, almost like he’d expected more of the pointless argument before he logic-ed himself out of it.  But Stiles could be reasonable.  Sometimes.  Besides, just because he knew how to be angry at Derek, it didn’t mean he wanted to be.  Anymore.  “You know you’re not going to be able to keep him out of this now?” he said, as though he was willing Stiles to accept that, too.  Seeing as how he was on a roll and all.

Stiles shrugged, said almost defiantly, “I can still try.”

“He doesn’t know how to let things go, not when he thinks he can help.”  Derek muttered under his breath, hand curled over the side of the cardboard box he’d been loading things into, the one that looked like it’d been used and reused far too many times, “Lot like someone else I know.”

It wasn’t like Stiles had no reason for wanting to keep Scott out of this one though.  Derek didn’t get it, despite Stiles trying to make the case for it.  Because he’d never actually sat Derek down and explained it, that Scott accepted the werewolf stuff, the danger and the responsibility and the heightened… everything, but that he didn’t  _want_  it.  That if he could go back to being an asthmatic teenager with no chance at first line or the new girl in school, he would do it and doggedly pursue Allison regardless.  Much like Stiles did with Lydia.

Or had done anyway.

He hadn’t really… thought about Lydia that way since, well.  Since he and Derek had started spending so much time together, looking for Erica and Boyd, strategizing how to deal with a pack of amped up Alphas who either wanted Derek’s allegiance or his head.  Derek was—He eclipsed things.  He took up so much of Stiles’ focus and attention and challenged and provoked more than anyone Stiles had ever met, even when he wasn’t trying to, to the point where it was almost impossible to have another thought,  _any_  other thought, when he was around.

And Stiles didn’t think he was alone in that either.  Neither one of them could seem to help but  _react_  to the other.  Even when what they were reacting to was loud breathing or the way the other was  _standing_.  They’d had all kinds of ridiculous arguments simply to justify the way they were so  _aware_  of the other person.

Stiles could see in the set of Derek’s mouth that he had already accepted that Scott was a part of this now and Stiles needed him to fight it still.  And if there was one thing he could always get Derek to do, it was fight.  Though he’d learned different ways of, and different motivations for accomplishing that in the past few months.  “He’s just—he’s been on this whole ‘bettering himself’ kick and he’s gotten really serious about school and more realistic about Allison and I just.”  He looked at Derek, trying to force him through just his expression to understand how much he  _needed_ this.  “I want him to be able to keep his head down, for once, since I got him bit and this whole werewolf carousel – werousel,” he motioned in a circle with his index finger, “started turning.” 

Derek sighed, nostrils flaring and shoulders dropping and Stiles could see that he was not just going to agree but that he  _understood_.  “I’ll keep trying to run him off,” he promised.

Stiles took a step closer to him and Derek stood up from where he’d been crouching and Stiles wanted to do things to him, wanted to thank him for that warm, apologetic look in his eyes when Stiles had said, ‘got him bit,’ even if he hadn’t deserved it.  And he wanted to do it with his mouth.  He licked his lower lip, feeling a swoop in his stomach when Derek’s eyes dropped to it, and asked in a voice that came out oddly out of breath, “Where’s Isaac?” 

Derek swallowed.  “Loft.”

They were definitely going to do this then.  This was how it had gone every time before too.  It was always Stiles who seemed to push it, to close that final distance between them but Derek always reacted like he’d been primed for it since Stiles first arrived.

Stiles pressed into Derek’s bubble of personal space, reached out for his neck – a bad habit around a werewolf, and one that he couldn’t seem to break – and curled his fingers into it, palm pressed tight to the dip and thumb brushing back and forth over warm skin.  He pulled Derek into him, met him with his mouth already tilted to find him easily.  His scruff was rough but Stiles knew he would be used to the scratch of it soon and Derek’s tongue was slipping past his lips.  They didn’t always do that.  Sometimes it was just a kiss.  Just something he dropped on Derek when he walked in or out of the loft, a ‘hello, my hands are full,’ or ‘goodbye, sorry we didn’t find much today,’ as he breezed past.  And sometimes it was chaste but anything but brief, a slip-slide of their mouths that they were both reluctant to end or deepen, and sometimes – like now – it was the prelude to something.

They could never seem to decide what they were to each other: two people so settled into routine that affection went by barely noticed or so new to it that a brush of their fingers could leave their skin tingling for hours after.

Derek took his weight and, even still, Stiles got a little thrill from that that reached all the way down to his toes and rallied his dick.  Derek gathered up Stiles’ shirts and the loop of his jeans in the small of his back and smoothed his free hand over the back of Stiles’ thigh, lifting him with barely any effort at all.  Stiles squeezed his thighs around Derek’s hips, loving the way that felt and it had him  _aching_  even this early on.  Derek pressed him up against a beam, increasing the weight and pressure on Stiles’ cock to the point where his eyes nearly crossed, and licked a path up his neck.  Stiles shivered in his arms, fingers clenching into Derek’s neck and twisting up in the shoulder of a well-worn Henley.

He could feel Derek grinning against his skin.  He had never said it but Stiles knew he liked how responsive he was.  There wasn’t anything that Derek could do to him that wouldn’t make Stiles practically  _quiver_  and it seemed to please Derek every time.

Derek dropped him more in the cradle of his lap now that he had the beam to catch some of Stiles’ weight and their cocks slid together.  Stiles groaned low, dropping both hands to grip at Derek’s shoulders and Derek caught his mouth again.  Though he’d never seemed to mind the noises Stiles made in the few times they had gotten off together, he seemed to like  _tasting_  them more.

Derek rocked their hips together in a torturous and tantalizing slow dance and Stiles bit Derek’s lower lip in retaliation, which made Derek judder against him, burying his nose in the hollow of Stiles’ neck and  _inhaling_.  There were claws against the underside of Stiles’ thigh, he could feel them pressing divots into his jeans.  Derek kept his face buried, breaths heavy and heaving.  Stiles wondered if his eyes were red.  It had only happened that first time, the only time they’d dry humped, and it had made Stiles shoot off like he never had before.

“Look at me,” he said softly, breathily, tugging a little at Derek’s hair with his whole hand to try to get him to raise his head.

Derek huffed into his neck, pressed in harder with his hips.  Stiles threw his head back with a whimper and Derek nuzzled more now that his throat was exposed.  Stiles still couldn’t see his eyes but Derek was slowly working his way up to looking at him, dragging his nose over Stiles’ skin, pressing into the underside of his jaw in a delicious sort of suspense because if Derek looked up and there was an Alpha behind those eyes, Stiles was going to fucking—his phone trilled loudly in his pocket, three times in quick succession, the vibration and sound muffled by his jeans. 

Stiles reached for it with fingers that felt numbed, because everything was potentially life or death and he couldn’t afford to ignore it.  He dug his phone out of his pocket and let out an unhappy groan.  “It’s Scott.”  There were a series of three text messages unopened on his lock screen.  He caught the sneer on Derek’s face before he could school his expression into something more neutral and narrowed his eyes.  “What?”  He was torn between pressing forward—his cock’s idea, shock—and finding his feet and stepping purposefully back—his inner combative teenager’s idea.

Derek made the decision for him.  He let Stiles’ weight go slowly until Stiles was standing on his own two feet and then took a step back himself.  Stealing Stiles’ move.  Which wasn’t all  _that_ big a surprise; sometimes they really could bring out the fucking worst in each other.

Stiles’ cock ached in protest, balls heavy and sore between his legs, but the tight expression on Derek’s face was rapidly killing his excitement.  If they’d been farther into it, really grinding into each other like they’d done once before, he’s not sure he would’ve been able to let Derek stop for anything.  The touching and Derek’s breath on his neck and the slow rubbing had just been enough to get every inch of his skin to prickle and for that annoying fluttering to spread out from his chest, but it wasn’t keeping his dick hard, even if he was goosebumped with anticipation still.

Derek crossed his arms and seemed to be rage-willing his own erection away.  The frickin’ psycho.  His mouth tightened, like he was debating between saying nothing and something.  Finally, he challenged, chest still rising and falling exaggeratedly from the sex they’d almost just had, “He texted you how many times over the summer?  But now that he needs someone to sit with at the lunch table, he’s willing to put the time in again.”  He hadn’t talked to Stiles like that in a while, like there was this ocean of space between them that was their respective ages.  It’d had that, ‘you’ll understand when you’re older,’ cadence.

Stiles  _hated_  that cadence.  Besides, they’d already had a few discussions that followed along where this one seemed to be going and Stiles had made his feelings on those quite clear.  He scowled.  “I told you to lay off this.” 

“You could do better,” Derek snapped back. 

Stiles glared at him.  “Stop, okay, I mean it.”  His hands were actually shaking with how upset he was and his dick was completely flaccid, like it’d never even had a minute speck of interest in Derek.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about so, drop it.”  Stiles wasn’t just saying that.  Derek truly had no idea what he was talking about.  Whatever they may look like now, he didn’t know their history, he didn’t know how  _good_  Scott had been when Stiles’ mom—He didn’t know.  You didn’t badmouth Scott, and you  _sure as hell_  didn’t do it in front of Stiles.

Derek snorted, shook his head.  He shifted slightly on his feet and said angrily, “Go back to Scott, Stiles.”  He said it almost like he was relieved to finally have it out there, like it’d been on the tip of his tongue for ages.

Stiles frowned.  He had no idea where this was coming from.  When did Derek decide it was a  _choice_  between them?  And  _why_  would he decide that, especially when it didn’t have to be?  Stiles took a small, uncertain step forward, softening.  “Hey, I didn’t say I had to leave.”  He didn’t know what this was, so he had no idea what Derek might want to hear here.

Derek’s nostrils flared wide and he bit out, “We both knew this wasn’t going to last, not as soon as—I can do this myself.”

Just like that, he was back to believing everyone was out to get him, that he was everybody’s last choice.  Which was just stupid.  Because Stiles had spent months being on his side and he thought, what, because Scott was around again that Stiles was going to drop him?  So now he was trying to get there first.  Stupid.

“First off,” Stiles told him seriously, “you really can’t.  And second, I told you the reason I wanted to keep Scott out of it and it has nothing to do with—with,” he gestured between them and finished noncommittally, “this.”  He wasn’t trying to hide Derek because he was afraid it would come down to a choice if he didn’t.  He wasn’t exactly eager for Scott to find out about… all of this but he wasn’t  _ashamed_  of it either. 

“‘This?’” Derek repeated, caught somewhere between mean and defiant. 

Which wasn’t exactly fair.  It wasn’t like they fit snugly into any category and Stiles wasn’t going to be the one to put a name to them first, not with how little he knew about this stuff or about what Derek was thinking.  “Do you want me to try to define it, because I really don’t think I should.”

Derek’s lip raised like he wanted to snarl. 

Stiles huffed and ran a hand through his hair.  “Right now, it’s—I don’t know, man,” he gestured towards Derek, “you are the sum total of my sexual experience, no one else has ever even kissed me on the mouth, let alone dry humped me until I thought another universe was opening up inside my fucking chest.”  He scrubbed at his hair, momentarily missing the buzzcut as he caught a few strands the wrong way and winced slightly.  “But it’s not—” 

It wasn’t just  _that_  with them.  Stiles had lost count of the times he’d fallen asleep reading on Derek’s couch and woken up across from him on his bed, not touching except for a brazen hand reaching across the space between them, the back of it curled up against Derek’s chest or under his neck as though to check his heart was still beating or his pulse was still thrumming.  Stiles didn’t look at him and expect things then.  He thought about touching Derek’s hair, thought about falling back to sleep feeling warm and safe – which wasn’t a given anymore, thought about how nice it was to see Derek that relaxed but he didn’t think… sexy stuff because that almost felt like it would cheapen it.

And it wasn’t just the nice stuff either – the warm, relationship stuff or the passionate, horny stuff.  They also had screaming matches in Derek’s kitchen, had to take days-long breaks from each other’s company because just the sight of the other person’s face was enough to set them off again.  Stiles needed two hands just to count how many times he’d truly  _hated_ Derek in the past few weeks.  They didn’t fit a definition, just each other.

“Sometimes I wouldn’t even call you a friend,” Stiles told him honestly, “and sometimes I don’t think there’s a word significant enough for what I feel about you.  So I don’t know.  Our relationship, it’s—it’s in a constant state of flux, right.  And I think defining it, or trying to, is the very worst thing we could do to it.”  That’s what it came down to, for Stiles at least.  They didn’t suit any mold really and he was fine with that, because maybe that just meant they had to make a new one.

Derek took a step closer to him, eyes cast off to the side and said gruffly, “So we don’t.  Define it.”

Stiles swallowed, caught his eye.  “You’re okay with that?”

Derek huffed out a laugh and said, “If that’s the worst thing in my life, Stiles; that I don’t know what to call this?”  He shrugged, still smirking, eyes almost glittering.  “Then yeah, I think I can live with that.”

**Author's Note:**

> What? [Tumblr](http://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/), that's what. Don't question it.


End file.
